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Author Under Sail Jay Williams University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and University of Nebraska Press Chapters 2014 Author Under Sail Jay Williams Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples Williams, Jay, "Author Under Sail" (2014). University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters. 286. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/286 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Nebraska Press at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. AUTHOR UNDER SAIL Buy the Book Buy the Book Author Under Sail THE IMAGINATION OF JACK LONDON, 1893– 1902 JAY WILLIAMS University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London Buy the Book © 2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Williams, Jay (James W.) Author under sail: the imagination of Jack London, 1893– 1902 / James (Jay) W. Williams. pages cm Summary: “The definitive examination of the early works of Jack London through London’s incorporation and understanding of the role of imagination”— Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978- 0- 8032- 4991- 2 (hardback: alk. paper) isbn 978- 0- 8032- 5683- 5 (epub) isbn 978- 0- 8032- 5684- 2 (mobi) isbn 978- 0- 8032- 5682- 8 (pdf) 1. London, Jack, 1876– 1916. 2. Authors, American— 19th century— Biography. 3. Authors, American— 20th century— Biography. 4. London, Jack, 1876– 1916— Criticism and interpretation. 5. Imagination in literature. 6. Realism in literature I. Title. II. Title: Imagination of Jack London, 1893– 1902. ps3523.o46z9955 2014 813'.52— dc23 [B] 2014020276 Set in Utopia and Geogrotesque types. Designed by Richard Hendel. Buy the Book For Patsy Buy the Book Buy the Book CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 chapter 1 Spirit Truth 19 chapter 2 From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again 63 chapter 3 “I Will Build a New Present” 95 chapter 4 Sons as Authors 141 chapter 5 Fathers as Publishers 184 chapter 6 The Daughter as Author 238 chapter 7 Lovers as Authors 287 chapter 8 At Sea with the Family 326 chapter 9 Yellow News, Yellow Stories 365 chapter 10 The Return Home 411 Notes 465 Bibliography 563 Index 577 Buy the Book Buy the Book ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have entered a rather exclusive club, not to be desired, that con- sists of authors who have taken an inordinate amount of time to finish a manuscript. One of the dues of this club is to pay respect to people one remembers being of help and to admit to forgetting an additional number of people who were equally helpful but whose names have been lost partly because one never imagined finishing the book. An aide- mémoire is place: where I was when people helped me. So, in New York City, Chris Kotowski, Hugh Zurkuhlen, Steve Draper, Robert Peluso, Bridget Moore, John Kilduff, Dee Korz Kilduff, Priscilla Wald, Dave Johnson, Michael Neth, Mark Jones, G. T. Tanselle, and Ann Douglas. In Glen Ellen, California, Russ Kingman, Winnie Kingman, and I. Milo Shepard. In Glen Ellyn, Illinois, my mother and stepfather, Joanne and Leo Spec- tor, deserve a very special call out: they financed my attendance at the first Jack London symposium, which started this whole thing (sigh), and many endeavors after, though it was never about the money. In Chicago, W. J. T. Mitchell, Arnold I. Davidson, Françoise Meltzer, Bill Brown, Tami Wysocki, and all the people I worked with at Critical Inquiry, especially Dave Schabes, Jessica Burstein, John O’Brien, Paul Peppis, Kris- tin Casady, Andrew Skomra, Hank Scotch, Jeff Rufo, Anne Stevens, John Tresch, Robert Huddleston, Siobhan McDevitt, Melissa Oglesby, Jennifer Peterson, Abigail Zitin, Kate Gaudet, Zarena Aslami, Anat Benzvi, Neda Ulaby, and Andrew Yale. In the world of Jack London studies, Tony Williams, Susan Gatti, Dan Wichlan, Susan Nuernberg, Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Ken Brandt, Joe McAleer, Lenny Cassuto, Jonathan Auerbach, Hensley Woodbridge, An- drew J. Furer, Earle Labor, Sue Hodson, and Cecelia Teschi. Clarice Stasz has been especially critical to my development as a Jack London scholar. At the Huntington Library, Alisa M. Monheim, Jaeda Snow, Anne Mar, Carrie Saliers, Catherine Wehrey, Meredith Berbee, Sara Georgi, Mona Shulman, Kadin Henningsen, and Juan Gomez. It’s not just about taking slips from patrons; I appreciate their kindnesses and support. [ ix Buy the Book At Utah State University, A. J. Simmonds, Brad Cole, and Clint Pum- phrey. A very grateful note to Matt Bokovoy, who stayed with this project for many, many years at two different presses and provided a crucial footnote to boot. Many thanks to others at the University of Nebraska Press, espe- cially Joeth Zucco and Tish Fobben. To Karen Brown, who copyedited this beast and became a collaborator. My largest intellectual debt— and much more— is to Chris Gair, who read this manuscript several times and who argued with me all around the world. To my siblings— Mark Williams, Anne Williams, Cathie McGowan, Amy Nickoloff (and her husband, Craig Nickoloff, who hosted me in Los Ange- les a number of times), and Beth Kostka—and my dad, Mark Williams, and stepmother, Nancy Williams. And especially to Clare Leary, who was there at the beginning, and to Alison Archer, who is sharing another beginning with me. The last lines go to my daughter, Patsy Williams, whose unswerving love, support, and guidance made this book possible in so many ways. She embodies why writing is worthwhile: the expression of the joy in life. x ] Acknowledgments Buy the Book AUTHOR UNDER SAIL Buy the Book Buy the Book INTRODUCTION He, by some wonder of vision, saw beyond the farthest outpost of empiricism, where was no language for narration. — Jack London, Martin Eden Life lies in order to live. Life is a perpetual lie- telling process. Appearances are ghosts. Life is ghost land. — Jack London, John Barleycorn ny traditional summation of events surrounding the date 1900— a year, like 2000, that draws our attention magnetically— will include the panic of 1893 and the A formation and disintegration of Coxey’s and Kelly’s industrial armies, the Chicago Columbian Exposition, Plessy v. Ferguson, the discovery of gold in the Klondike, the first public viewings of films, and the war with Spain. In general, it was a time in the United States of three key trends: industrial and financial develop- ment through consolidation and incorporation; world power exercised by military strength; and general protest and dispute voiced against the incorporating and military powers. Jack London was personally involved in four of six specific events during this time and a major figure of one of these trends. Perriton Maxwell, at one time the editor of Cosmopolitan and later a literary agent, contacted London in August 1916 to see if he would be interested in writing a short message “for one of the foremost and influential of American magazines” and for the “American people” in general on the question of “the significance of Christmas day 1916.” Maxwell had been asked to contact “the ten most distinguished and rep- resentative citizens of this country.” He tells London, “For many obvious reasons I have chosen you as one of this important group.”1 The irony of this request is stunning. First, Christmas was always a day of depression, anxiety, and aloneness for London. Second, by Christmas 1916 London was dead. Third, his writing career is bracketed by references to Christ- mas: his very first essay on socialism, written in 1895, begins, “Socialism [ 1 Buy the Book and Christmas. How incongruous this specter, stalking forth when all is joy and merry- making!”2 What was obvious to Maxwell has been obvious to historians and critics. London’s name appears in list after list of men and women who exemplified certain qualities of that time— the virile outdoorsman, the magazine writer, the labor agitator, the adventurer, the Californian, the bohemian. Whether it was a time of excess, or strenuousness, or energy, London seems to embody it. London himself called it the “machine age,” both because of the preponderance of new machines that mechanized labor (and thus seemed to diminish the presence and status of the hu- man being) and because of the high speed with which contemporary life moved.3 Jack London’s biographers also tend to focus on his social or po- litical position rather than on his principal occupation as author. He has been a saint, a labor leader, the American Adam, the drunk and drug ad- dict, the sailor on horseback, but not the author. Although there are any number of studies of his work, there is no full- length treatment of London in his principal profession.4 The critical studies of London’s work deal first and foremost with the question of his position and value within the period of American realism and naturalism. Here I want to emphasize that I am using the terms real- ism and naturalism precisely as period markers, not as terms to define a succession of two generations of writers who supposedly shared a set of solutions to problems such as the insufficiencies of romanticism, the representation of reality in general, the representation of the machine age in particular, or other social and/or literary questions. I agree with Michael Davitt Bell that the use of these terms in this way is a falsifica- tion of the programs or agendas of the writers who published between the Civil War and World War I.
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